Money may not grow on trees, but New Hampshire harvests plenty of greenbacks when the roadsides and mountains blaze with orange, yellow and red.

Nearly 85 percent of the Granite State's 5.7 million acres is forested. It's the second most heavily forested state in the country, second only to Maine. And northern hardwoods — maple, beech, birch — cover some 2.2 million acres. Without all those trees, no one would be coming to New Hampshire to view the spectacle that is fall foliage.

And come they do.

Tourism officials predict 7.5 million visitors will traverse the Granite State this fall — and they will spend more than $1 billion, according to Tai Freligh of the Division of Travel and Tourism Development.

They will spend that money over three months on lodging, food, attractions and more. If they come in the numbers forecast and spend in the amounts projected, it could be just the shot in the arm the state needs.

"A good foliage season would be a great kick-start to getting back on track," Freligh said.

Those predictions mirror what happened last fall.

"That's pretty decent, considering where we were with economic conditions and high gas prices," Freligh said, thinking back a year to when a gallon of gas topped $4. "People are still cautious. We're just starting to see signs we're coming out of it."

Fall is really important to the state's tourism industry, second only to summer, according to Freligh. This weekend is the third most important of the year, he added, trailing only July 4 and Labor Day.

It helps that Columbus Day usually falls during peak foliage, and visitors flood the state for the long weekend and plenty of touring.

Many of those visitors come from other parts of New England, New York and Canada, according to Freligh. And lots of them arrive by bus; coach tours are big business at this time of year.

Foliage season is far from over

While the holiday weekend is key, Freligh said officials really look at the entire three months, and he predicts the color is going to last through the end of the month.

The state's most recent foliage report appears to bear that out. The Merrimack Valley is just approaching peak, but there is plenty of green left. That makes the color that is here stand out, but it also bodes well for an extended season.

The Seacoast is still a week or two away from peak, according to the report, but the Great North Woods and White Mountains are already there.

Fred Borman, a forest educator with the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, said he's been tracking the season's progress.

"This is a great weekend for people to get out," he said. "It's the prime weekend for getting out, taking a hike, a drive through the mountains."

Borman said people should celebrate the spectacular fall color this year because they suffered through a wet spring and summer. That rain may not have been good for summer tourism, but it was good for the trees. They are healthy and produced a lot of food, thanks to the rain. And now they're showing off with an unusually brilliant fall display, he said.

That's appreciated in forestry quarters, too. While foresters are in the business of harvesting the state's trees, they are also invested in maintaining New Hampshire forests and recognize the recreational opportunities they bring to the state.

Foliage viewing tops that list — by a mile. Leaf-peepers bring in far more money than do snowmobilers, campers and downhill skiers, according to the National Survey on Recreation and the Environment, a report produced every four or five years by the Department of Commerce.

"When I look at this stuff compared to snowmobiling, downhill skiing, this is obviously a lot bigger deal," said Charles Levesque, president of the North East State Foresters Association. "This is a big deal. A lot of people do this. That's what struck me, especially compared to magnitude of other things."

State cashes in on its forests

The red maple is No. 1 in New Hampshire in terms of the number of trees and the volume of trees, Levesque said. And that's the tree that turns the brilliant red that draws tourists' eyes and camera lenses. Sugar maples provide yellow and orange accents.

In 2005, the most recent data available, revenue from forest-related recreation and tourism worked out to $221 an acre, just behind manufacturing at $252 an acre, and way ahead of Christmas trees and maple products at $2 an acre.

Every 1,000 acres of New Hampshire forestland supports 2.4 forest-related tourism and recreation jobs, according to a study by the North East State Foresters Association.

While the forest product industry was hard hit by the economic downturn, Levesque said things are slowly starting to pick up. There are more loggers back in the woods, and more sawmills gearing up.

With an economic upturn comes a return to the ever-present threat of development on the state's forests, he said.

"When development was at its peak a number of years ago, we were losing 10,000 to 15,000 acres a year to development. That has petered down to very little," Levesque said. "But that's always a threat. We will see that again when the economy picks up again, changing forest to non-forest use because of development."

Invasive insects, particularly the Asian longhorned beetle and the emerald ash borer, are the second biggest threat to the state's forests.

"I don't think anything approaches those two things," Levesque said.

But those threats probably won't enter the minds of the estimated 590,000 visitors expected in the state this weekend, predicted to be the fourth busiest Columbus Day weekend in New Hampshire history.

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